I mean. And Wallace can do the same when he's on
with her. That ugly white cat Hawtry to double on Godfrey Vandeford
after he pulled her out of Weehawken!"

"Get on, get on, everybody, and use your brains until they lather,"
commanded Mr. Rooney as he took his stand beside the left stage box.
"Now, Miss, you gimme lines out of your head or your first draft when I
call for 'em, and I'll take 'em or leave 'em as suits me. Then you
smooth the ones I hand you into good talk, and we'll have a show here
by sun-up that you'll be proud to invite your Christian lady friends to
attend. And we'll keep all the 'pep' too, Vandeford, that you paid
Howard to write into it, only we'll take the Hawtry dirt out of it. On,
Betty Carrington, and the curtain's up."

Then from three o'clock in the morning until almost noon the machinery
of "The Purple Slipper" was overhauled and adjusted to the new cog. Mr.
Rooney lashed and rubbed and polished and oiled with never a let-up on
anybody, and beside him sat the author, with her head up and the bit in
her mouth. For every line that rang untrue in the reconstruction she had
a true one or she took a crude bit from Mr. Rooney and polished it into
place. Fido sat crouched in a front seat and transcribed every word into
his prompt copy so as to be a veritable first aid.

And Mr. Godfrey Vandeford, experienced show man that he was, felt as if
he was witnessing a miracle as he beheld Miss Adair's original "Purple
Slipper," with its haphazard amateur charm, again put forth bud and
bloom on the branches of Grant Howard's tight-knit, well-constructed,
and well-rounded drama. The highly-colored flowers of Hawtry personality
Mr. Rooney pruned away and constructed others for Lindsey, and Miss
Adair lent them color and perfume in passing them to the new star, who
was working steadily, slowly, surely, and with great power.

"Don't tell him that his eyes 'burn into yours until your soul is
seared.' That's old. We got to get a kind of smile here where Hawtry
looked like she was going to do the ham sandwich act to Height and his
silk tights." Mr. Rooney stopped the abhorred scene, being acted along
about six o'clock in the morning, to demand that it be played in the
proper key, up to which he had succeeded in wringing lines from Miss
Adair for the first act and most of the second. "What do hearts do to
each other that's hot and decent and funny all at once?" Mr. Rooney
fired this biological question to the au